We have literally no confidence that what we tell you today will be true in like five hours. Since some of these articles were posted before newspapers went offline for the Sabbath, we’re not even sure whether they’re true now. The only slight, ego-saving excuse that we can find for our confusion is that we’re pretty sure no one else has any idea what’s going on either. We’re not talking about fundamental ideological confusion. We mean like who’s in what party, what’s their place on the party list, and who are they supporting. This is like fluidity in the days following the Big Bang that created Kadima and realigned Israeli politics, where what we think is going on is based on what analysts think a politician said, what they think their tone was when they said it, and a coin flip.
Except much sadder and without the confidence that everything will work out at the end.
Shimon Peres remains the fish that everybody is trying to catch. Peres walking out of his meeting with Olmert: “I haven’t finished my business with Olmert”. One Channel 10 commentator was so flustered he actually had to switch to describe the interview: Peres is playing “hard to get”.
We love anonymous sources:
A senior Kadima figure said Thursday the party would suffer a huge blow if Shimon Peres were to lead it. “Should, heaven forbid, Peres lead Kadima, everything will fall apart immediately,” the senior figure said. “We must choose [Ehud] Olmert in no more than a week, rally around him, choose an inner circle of five or six, and erase any signs of internal strife or disputes over places.”
Incidentally, how tied is Ha’aretz to the Labor party? The text of the article uses the phrase “coming home” in reference to Peres’s return to Labor. Not as a quote. As a description. The article call Labor “home”.
Kadima
All of Kadima’s MKs except Peres have united behind acting PM Ehud Olmert as Kadima’s candidate (incidentally, we have no clue why this article says Peres has committed to supporting Olmert; he hasn’t). He will be given the control over setting the party election list that Sharon would have had. Now he has to make sure that he still has a party left to elect. To prevent poaching from the Left – and hold on to the mandates that Sharon was taking from Meretz and Shinui – Olmert is moving to makes Peres a minister to keep him in Kadima. To prevent poaching from the Right – and hold on to the mandates that Sharon was taking from the Likud – Kadima has appointed former Likud #3 Tzachi Hanegbi as their election chair. Although there were plenty of rumors that Netanyahu had sent feelers out to him, right after he was appointed Hanegbi suddenly declared his unconditional support for Olmert. Don’t get us started.
There are still no polls which have a hope of accurately describing how voters will actually treat a Sharon-less Kadima. There’s just no way to accurately gauge how people feel about the party which culminated the Prime Minister’s career while he lies ill in a hospital. Kadima will lose some votes – the only question is how many. The number that was being thrown around on TV is that no less than 20 mandates were drawn from the Likud to Kadima “entirely because of Ariel Sharon.” That may be true initially – Sharon may have been the force that broke those voters’ ties to the Likud – but, now that they’re in Kadima, they’ll need a reason to reestablish those ties. Now that their inertia is in Kadima’s direction, another force needs to be applied for them to go back to the Likud.
Kadima MK Roni Milo published an article calling Kadima the last chance for Israel’s Center. Not technically true, but perhaps the last chance for a while.
Likud
YNet declares that Olmert’s “major battle will be waged against Netanyahu and Likud.” Two weeks ago, Netanyahu would have won or lost based on his ability to paint PM Sharon as a leftist. Now, the strategy is to paint the PM as the most responsible and respectable figure in Israeli history, and to drive a wedge between the public’s perception of PM Sharon and their perception of Olmert. Netanyahu has about two months to transform Olmert into the “father of the disengagement, who led the beloved Arik away from the hero’s own better instincts.
Labor
From YNet’s “we don’t know anything but we really do” roundup, we reproduce the Labor section in full. Because it’s funny. And true:
Meanwhile, Amir Peretz must decide on the Labor party list for the March elections. Currently, due to what Labor officials refer to as “ethnic pride,” Peretz is refraining from phoning Ehud Barak and opening a campaign to unify the ranks. Instead, he turned his daughter, Shani, into his closest and most influential adviser. But there are those who are quick to compare Shani to Omri Sharon, and usually the conclusions are not in favor of Peretz’s daughter. Now the Labor chairman must decide on a plan for his election campaign, which currently lacks any substantial direction. “The days are numbered, and we must start moving,” Labor officials said recently, even prior to Sharon’s hospitalization.
It’s not so much “ethnic pride” as “an insistence on stacking Labor with union friends”, but the basic gist is correct.
